Quantum Leap: Brothers
by Thor2000
Summary: Sam Beckett leaps from Jim Clancy on "Ghost Whisperer" into Brian Hackett on "Wings" and ends up meeting another Leaper who takes him back to the Titanic for a four-way multiple crossover.This story links with Suite Life: Immortal
1. Chapter 1

Summer in Grand View, Pennsylvania was a great time. The kids were often at the ballpark or the playground, several couples had lunches in the park and Melinda Gordon was able to wear the lightest of sundresses. She was feeling great, and her life even with the psychic distractions was going well. However, a day or so ago, her husband started acting oddly and started talking to things she couldn't see. Either he was starting to see ghosts as well, or he was mocking her ability. When she confronted him, she learned the rather stunning truth…

His name was actually Dr. Sam Beckett, and he was a time-traveler who leaped in and out of people's lives. When she looked at him, she saw a quantum phasic signature of her husband, Jim Clancy, but her husband the whole time was safely secured in the future, ready to pop back home the moment Sam popped back out of Jim's life. It seemed that Sam had leaped into Jim's alive to keep him from getting killed. His murder was apparently a very tragic time of Melinda's life and Sam was going to stop it from happening.

It didn't quite go that way.

When Sam Beckett was shot in Jim's place, Jim felt it and collapsed in the future. Something had gone wrong. Something had gone extremely wrong. Melinda Gordon sat by Beckett hanging to life in the hospital, hoping and wishing that he survived. If Sam died, did that mean she lost her husband as well. She was used to the deaths in other people's families, but why did it have to happen so close to her this time. Melinda was starting to realize that the future was coming true after all.

"Sam…" She looked upon him and held his hand. "Please, wake up. What happened? When does Jim come back?" She heard the sound of a chamber door opening and closing and looked up to Al coming through the opening. When Melinda realized that her psychic senses allowed her to see him, Sam was a bit skeptical of her powers at first, wondering if their mental pathways were similar enough to detect Al as a hologram, but then he had to act a bit more open to it considering that she had to be open to accept him as a time traveler.

"How is he?" Al looked to the shapely psychic.

"What happened?!" Melinda's tear-filled eyes looked to him. "You two told me you could stop Jim from getting killed!"

"Melinda, I'm sorry, but…" Al was shaking and rattling his comlink. "Gooshie is having a hard time getting any data. Something changed and instead we keep getting Paris Hilton's traffic reports…"

"Al…" Sam started waking. He blinked his eyes and opened his mouth wanting some water. "What happened?"

"Sam…" Melinda turned to the displaced time traveler in her husband's form. "Where's Jim? Did he get shot too?!"

"No, he didn't!!!" Al finally got some news. "Sam, you got shot in a different place this time, and Jim doesn't die! He lives! You changed history, Sam!!!" He turned to Melinda. "And Melinda, this time… You have a little girl instead of a son."

"A daughter?!" Melinda's tears of grief turned to tears of joy. She tried to hug Al, but only reached to empty hologram.

"Rats!!!" Al cursed. Losing the chance to hug the curvy psychic, he instead watched as she turned to Sam on the bed. Tired and in a bit of pain, Dr. Beckett forced a grin to Melinda looking at him. Her husband was going to live! He was going to live and they were going to have a baby!

"You got your husband back, Melinda." Sam ached a bit in pain. All she could do was voice the words "thank you," but from all over Sam, he erupted into a burst of twinkling lights, and Melinda looked back to see Sam's face melting away. Al just blinked out, but Melinda looked back, she found herself gazing back upon her time-misplaced husband instead of the face of Sam Beckett. She loved him so much! Jim looked back at her and then around the room.

"Melinda, what am I doing in the hospital?" He asked her.

"You are not going to believe me!" She wasn't sure she believed it!

When the light faded away from Sam Beckett, he found himself looking out around miles of open sky and then the controls of a plane at his hands. He was a pilot, but he knew nothing about flying a plane! His jaw dropped a bit, he looked around and realized he didn't have a co-pilot. He was the sole pilot of this small Cessna out over some ocean, and somehow, he had to figure out how to land it.

"Oh boy…"


	2. Chapter 2

2

Planes came and departed from Tom Nevers Field on Nantucket all the time. The top three airlines were Aeromass, run by the petulant and difficult Roy Biggins, and the other was Sandpiper Air owned and run by Joe Hackett, a well-liked resident of the island constantly just struggling by on his own, but most of his money was from privately flying heir William Collins from Collinsport, Maine around New England. The third airline was Nantucket Skies in the alcove between Aeromass and Helen Hackett's lunch counter. While it may not have had the popularity of the other two, it also doubled as a car rental place. Over at Helen's lunch counter, the former Helen Chapel, former local fat girl and eternal true love of Joe Hackett, shared and recreated the dishes, sandwiches and soups she loved so much. Enjoying a cheese sandwich and salad with lemonade, Tipton Hotel candy girl Maddie Fitzpatrick was enjoying her freedom by coming out to the island for rest and relaxation.

"Maddie…" Helen wiped off some of her trays. "How do you keep getting out here? You're never on Sandpiper and I know you don't take Roy's planes."

"Oh…" The cute Tipton candy girl sipped her soda. "I've kind of got my own ride…"

"Oh, you mean London's plane takes you around?"

"Something like that…" Maddie finished off her fries. "Would you believe I can get places where no one else can?" She had a secret of her own she was concealing.

On the other end of the terminal, Sam Beckett came in behind his passengers, a romantic couple arriving on a vacation, two residents, a struggling artist and a young beauty that worked in the hotel business to check out the local island inns. The last was Helen's look-alike cousin, Chelsea Chapel, a transplanted Seattle heiress who had decided to retire on the island with her family fortune to live with her newly discovered family members. She looked much like Helen except she had long curly brown hair, unblemished alabaster skin and a finely toned figure with a thirty-eight double-d chest. She did a lot of shopping back in Boston, and on the way back, Sam allowed her to land the plane… mostly because he couldn't.

"That was so much fun!!!" She was excited. "Thanks, Brian…"

"Yeah," Sam looked to her not realizing her reputation as a pilot. "You seemed to enjoy it." He did not see Brian's brother, Joe, coming up behind him. Sam watched Chelsea shining ear to ear, her chest filled with pride, and carrying her shopping bags out to Antonio's taxi. Casey Chapel, the Sandpiper counter girl and Helen's sister, looked to Joe reacting with a bit of annoyed and surprised astonishment and dropped down out of sight to avoid his tirade.

"You let Chelsea fly the plane?" Joe sounded annoyed.

"Well," Sam started to improvise, but then told the truth. "She really wanted to, and… we haven't let her do it in a while." What he didn't remark about was that he wasn't really Brian Hackett and that he didn't know how to fly.

"How'd she do?" Joe wasn't get upset. Given Chelsea had nearly crashed the plane twice before, he was taking it well. Casey rose back up wondering why Joe wasn't exploding.

"Well," Sam looked back at Chelsea sharing her new wardrobe with Helen. "I think she did well."

"She didn't have a power trip?" Casey asked.

"Power trip?" Sam wondered what history Brian was aware of that he didn't know. Out the corner of his ear, he heard Al entering the imaging chamber door in their native time-line, which allowed them to interact in the past.

"Sam…" Al spoke up. "They're speaking of Chelsea Victoria Chapel, born January 9, 1957, she's the surviving daughter of William and Victoria Chapel of Chapel Industries in Seattle, Washington. They were murdered in a mugging attempt when she was eight years old and since then, she's been drifting around trying to find a purpose in life. In 1990, she briefly worked as a pilot of Bluegrass Skies near Nashville, Tennessee but was fired because she developed a god complex and flew her plane straight into an electrical storm, risking the lives of her and her passengers." He looked the brunette beauty over and obsessed over her body. "How could such a major hottie like that be so unbalanced?"

"It was…" Sam turned back to Joe and Chelsea. "Just a landing…"

"As long as she didn't crash it…" Joe saw the good side.

"Or dump it in the ocean." Casey added. Sighing a bit, Joe traveled over to get his lunch from his wife at the counter. Gradually getting immersed into this leap, Sam crossed behind Casey and entered Joe's office, gesturing to Al to follow him. Looking around the holographic simulations around him, Al walked through the wall to join Sam in privacy.

"Al…" Sam regained his composure. "I was so scared we were going to crash, but then when she asked to land, well…"

"Don't worry about it…" Al held up his comlink. "Let's see here… it's November 11, 2008. You've leaped into Brian Hackett, a former NASA pilot now working as a charter pilot for his brother's charter system on Nantucket Island. Your brother is Joseph Hackett, a pilot himself, married to Helen Chapel-Hackett, a cellist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a childhood friend of the brothers. Helen's sister, Casey, works as the brother's attendant, and the sisters have a cousin you just met, Chelsea Chapel, an heiress who runs Helen's lunch counter when she's on tour."

"What am I here to do?" Sam postured around Joe's desk.

"Easy…" Al looked up. "Don't get killed."

"What?"

"Tomorrow, Brian Hackett takes his last flight…" Al read the accident report from Ziggy's Internet search. "On November 12, 2008 at 1:25 PM, Brian takes a plunge into Nantucket Sound on his flight to Boston. No one survives, and because the FAA blames it on pilot error, the families of the victims sue Joe, the co-owner of the business, into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He never recovers from the incident and vanishes from the public eye, moving to Boston with his wife to live out his life in secrecy."

"What if…" Sam thought it out. "Someone else takes the flight?"

"Ziggy says there's a 75.8 chance that could save the business, but who are you going to get?" Al looked back at Sam. "Joe? He's on medical restriction for stress. Mrs. Power Trip, she thinks she's a god every time she gets at the stick…"

"There are no other pilots on the island?" Sam asked. Al held two fingers up.

"…And they both work for Aeromass, Joe's competitor, and Roy Biggins, the owner of the company, is a piece of work." Al revealed. "He doesn't do favors."

"What if…" Sam looked out the door of Joe's office to the Cessna parked in their hangar. "We just grounded it… skipped tomorrow."

"Let's see…." Al started punching figures in to his comlink. "That could work…."

"Perfect…." Sam had his answer, but as the younger brother, he had to convince Joe. There was no reason to ground the plane when they had eleven charters that day, but it was just that one afternoon Nantucket to Boston charter he fretted about. He could take the earlier ones and then claim strange noises on the flight just before the time of doom, but why chance it? Given his inability to fly at all, he much preferred more to fly at all. He just had to convince Joe.

"Is there any reason in particular you can't take the flight?" Joe looked at the person he believed to be his brother.

"Well…" Sam tried to think. "Let's just say… I'm not feeling myself these days."

"Uh-huh…" Joe looked at him, rose from his desk and headed out to the front desk. "Casey, how many passengers tomorrow on the 1:00 charter to Boston?"

"Eleven to Boston, none so far for the return trip, but Mr. Collins wants you to fly him to Norwich, Rhode Island if you have the time." Casey may not have had the warmth of Faye, the previous attendant, but she was very efficient. "How am I doing?" She starved for a good word of praise.

"Great…" Joe grinned to his sister-in-law then closed the door to his office and looked back to his brother. "Brian, I can't do it; you really need to take that flight." He started out into the hangar.

"I'm going to die." Sam put it on the line. Joe turned around.

"What?"

"I can't explain it…" Sam tried to play a fear-of-death card. "But… I've got this… premonition that if I take the charter tomorrow that… I won't be returning from it. I know it sounds weird, but…"

"Well, funny you should say that, but…" Joe headed out to his plane parked in the hangar. "I lied. My stress isn't up. I… kind of had a premonition I could die tomorrow myself."

"What?" Sam was incredulous. Two brothers having the same fear? What were the odds of that! "You're kidding, right?"

"Nope." Joe mused and looked around determined not to take that flight.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want you thinking I was crazy!" Joe looked up into his plane, braced on the wing and sighed a bit. Sam started to say something, made a brief noise and turned to him. He wasn't sure how Brian acted in these circumstances, but he was going to act a bit more responsible to Joe's feelings.

"Joe… look…" Sam reached out to him. His hand reached out over brotherly love to lend his support, but upon actually touching Joe, there was an attraction of static electricity and lights flashed over him. He wasn't leaping, but he could see the hangar. Joe was changing in appearance, one façade falling away and another taking his place. Sam was looking over at someone other than Joe Hackett. It was then that he realized the truth: he was looking at another leaper! Touching him forced their neurons and maisons in sync so that they could recognize each as they really were.

"Who are you?!" Sam was in shock.

"Oh boy…." His counterpart looked to be just as much in shock as he was.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Sam looked in shock at what he had discovered. What were the chances of two people lost in time and being tracked by satellite technology bouncing signals off stars in the universe? Sam had met just one other person like this before, and she was not at all what he had expected. He was both scared and surprised.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"You're another leaper?" His counterpart was equally stunned to be seeing him. "I don't believe it."

"I'm Sam…" The doctor tried to force introductions. "…Dr. Samuel Beckett, and you're…"

"Jason Danvers…" The substitute for Joe Hackett nervously reached over to shake hands with him. "I can't… I can't believe this! Are you from the institute? Are you here to help me get home?"

"No," Sam and Jason stood before each other going around each other in circles. "I was part of a experiment called Project Quantum Leap… We were involved in…"

"Generating artificial black holes for experiments in time travel?" Jason guessed.

"Well, not quite…" Sam chuckled and looked back. "You were involved in black hole experiments…"

"I helped to fund the research…" Jason confessed. "It was on the grounds I could have a first-hand involvement on the project, and it did well for several weeks until the system core went down…"

"The same thing happened to me!" Sam responded. "I was in the particle acceleration chamber when I leaped, but…"

"You never got back." Jason forced a smile. "I feel as if I found a brother…" He heard the sound of pneumatic tubes sliding a hatch side to side. There was a burst of round light in the hangar opening and someone entering the room. Lab tech Max Turkleton was one of three holographic guides that Jason had trying to pull him back through the strings of probability linking him to their time. At some times, Jason encountered Zoe Bouchard, an exceptionally attractive brunette of French Canadian ancestry with an extraordinary IQ, or Taylor Oh, a Korean physicist who had tried to get Jason to save his grandfather during the Korean War. With this option of guides, though, it was Max's bald African American head he saw the most often.

"Dude," Max arrived wearing a sterile white suit with a radio headset and carrying a miniaturized black computer comlink wired to a battery on his belt. "ALEX can't get anything on the crash of the Cessna. She's been talking to some other program called Ziggy and…" He looked up with alarm. "Who the hell is this? Where's the idiot brother?"

"This is the idiot brother." Jason grinned excitedly. "He's another leaper!"

"Wait…" Sam reacted to see Jason talking to someone he couldn't see and became even more intrigued. "Are you talking to a holographic projection?"

"Yeah…" Jason responded proudly. "Max, meet Sam. Sam, this is Max, my buddy."

"Hi…" Sam grinned and looked in the wrong direction and waved.

"Another leaper…" Max responded comedically annoyed. "I knew the government was using our research elsewhere, but no…. all I ever get is, 'We are not at liberty to discuss it.' Lousy stinking government bureaucrats…" He paused, paced a bit annoyed and punched up a newspaper report from 2008 on his computer screen. "Dude, you changed history. Now ALEX is saying both you and the brother get killed in the crash."

"What?" Jason was incredulous.

"What did he say?" Sam couldn't see or hear Max; only Jason's responses to him.

"Max says we both now die in the crash."

"What?!" It was now Sam's chance to react with disbelief.

"Sam…" It was now Al's chance to arrive to this incredible situation at Tom Never's Field on Nantucket. Walking through the portal of light from his future time, he was punching and checking records from 2008 on his opaque and translucent glowing comlink. "Sam, you changed history somewhere. Ziggy now says both of you lose your lives tomorrow, and…." He noticed the image of Joe Hackett missing around Jason Danvers. "Who the heck is this?"

"Al, he's another leaper." Sam was excited at these parallels. As Jason and Max ran projections and scenarios, he communed with his own holographic partner. "His name's Jason Danvers." Sam told him what he knew. "He says he was doing research in time travel for USI when he was lost in a system failure. They've been tracking him much as Ziggy has been tracking me."

"USI? They do a lot of government contracts." Al checked the records at USI for confirmation. "I found him, Sam. In 1995, the Universal Science Institute was participating in time travel research and was somehow actually able to pull small items out of the past. Jason Danvers was one of the people helping to fund the project on the proviso that he could have a first-hand connection to the project, but he was rumored to have vanished when their projection chamber exploded."

"Maybe they didn't lose him." Al realized. "Maybe they were able to keep a lock on him just as Ziggy keeps a lock on me and they've been tracking him in the time stream."

"That's right…" Jason turned round after Max stepped out and hearing Sam talking to himself. "The project was able to keep a neural connection with me whenever I went into the past, but after the explosion, they lost control over the inter-dimensional foundation protocol and could only keep contact with me over the neural link." He paused and looked back to Max a moment. "The hope is by altering the past into certain directions we can affect the probability that resulted in the explosion."

"Altering the past…" Sam recalled his experience with another leaper he had encountered named Ilia. Her motives were more sinister when they last crossed. "By sending Brian to his death?" He asked.

"God, no!" Jason revealed himself to be honorable. "It was Joe that crashed…."

"Joe crashed?" Sam and Al reacted together. Al responded by feeding more data to Ziggy.

"Sam…" Al reacted with the news. "Ziggy says we must have two concurrent timelines here resulting from a commonality in history. One where Joe died and one where Brian died, if we can save both brothers, we can completely link our technologies and get you both home!"

"What's going on…" Jason suspected Sam had a holographic partner as well. "What's your guy saying?"

"We have two separate histories…" Sam had always had suspicions about alternate quantum realities, but this was actually his first experience with them. "If either brother takes tomorrow's charter, he still dies in a crash. Two pilots experiencing pilot error on the same charter in two realities, and now, both of us tomorrow… This isn't right…"

"Wait…" Jason thought over it. "How can two guys with exceptional pilot training taking the same course they've finished several times still crash?" He looked to Sam. "Wait, why don't we just eliminate the variable. It wasn't pilot error. Maybe it's the plane that crashed."

"The plane…" Sam thought it over. "Al, do you have any information that the crash was anything but pilot error?" He turned to his own holographic companion.

"No, nothing… Sam." Al waved his comlink a second before pulling up the record of the crash on it. "The FAA dredged up the plane from Nantucket Sound and covered it thoroughly after the crash for the insurance company. There was no reason for the crash whatsoever. The only reason they could come up with was that Brian had been distracted on the flight back from Boston."

"What's he saying?" Jason asked.

"The insurance company is still blaming it on pilot error…" Sam revealed to Jason.

"Two brothers in separate tangents making the same error?" Jason didn't buy that. He wished his own partner were nearby. "Wait, ask him for all information on the area pertaining to weather, ocean conditions and other local flights…"

"I heard him…" Al was searching through the records of the time. "Let's see, the weather was for clear skies, there were records for a fishing trawler in the area… Wait, this is interesting. In a non-related case, crab fisherman eleven miles off Martha's Vineyard reported seeing a presence in the sky coming from near Nantucket and traveling north at about the same time as Brian was returning from Boston, but the FAA never bothered to connect the cases."

"A UFO, Al?" Sam became skeptical. "A UFO?"

"A UFO is just a flying object that has not been identified." Jason responded analytically. "And they generally tend to appear over several days in the same area." Jason tagged Sam and headed to Joe's office to contact the tower.

"What are you doing?" Sam followed him.

"I'm changing another variable." Jason looked at him. "We're taking a flight today in addition to tomorrow."

"Oh boy!!!!" Al reacted.


	4. Chapter 4

4

The sky was a beautiful red-orange glow as the sun started descending into sunset. There was a gingerly eastward wind as Jason Danvers checked the readings and did the log. Sam was watching impressed. He was glad Jason was a pilot, and on that same note, Jason wished he had Sam around for all the times he had to be a doctor. Joe's wife rapped the window by him.

"Joe, honey…" Helen was on the tarmac outside the main building talking to a man she thought was her husband. "Are you going to be home for dinner?"

"I promise!" Jason spoke for Joe Hackett.

"You can fly a plane?" Sam was in the other seat as Brian Hackett.

"Yeah…" Jason waited for tower instructions and Helen left the tarmac to run back in to her lunch counter. There were two others in the plane she did not see: two holographic companions to the men posing as her husband and brother-in-law.

"Sam, can you trust this guy?" Al was still skeptical of anyone who could leap since his and Sam's experience with Ilia.

"Dude, ALEX is now saying you both die today." Max was criticizing his buddy. "Please don't do this. You know I hate flying. Do you want to see a hologram barf? I'll do it. I swear I'll do it!"

"Sandpiper One, ready to taxi…" Jason looked to Sam and back to Max as he talked to the tower over his headset.

"Sam," Al paced up and down between the seats brushing in and out with Max pacing with him. "Ziggy says you both die now. You've got to stop him!"

"Al, I think I know what we're doing." Sam looked back to him. The plane started to taxi out.

"Your hologram having a conniption?" Jason asked.

"Yep…" Sam watched as the ground started speeding by him. The plane was speeding out toward the end of the island and the waters of Nantucket Sound. The plane was handling perfectly, just as it was meant to. Jason adjusted for speed and thrust and kept the wings steady as the plane acquired thrust. As the air currents moved in different speeds under and over the wings, the tiny Cessna gained lift and took to the sky. It was a wonderful feeling. Sam was grinning ear to ear.

"Have we crashed yet? Have we crashed yet?!" Max was sitting behind Jason and hugging his comlink.

"Max…" Jason spoke as he controlled the plane in the air. "Get ALEX to start scanning for anything out of the ordinary like birds, updrafts or unusual weather phenomenon."

"Al, you do the same thing!" Sam gave the same request to Al.

"Sam, I have a bad feeling about this." He computed the holographic design linking him to Sam to keep them in constant distance as the plane moved at three hundred miles an hour through the air. "I bet I locate something before the other guy."

"Dude, I hate to be an I told you so, but if you get killed, I told you so!!!" He changed the elevation of the simulation of Jason in the past so that he rode outside the plane descended over nothing but a floor turned into moving seas below. In tune to Sam's brainwaves, Al hovered in the same way with the plane in a synchronous lock with them. "I bet I get something before the other guy!"

"He's just like a kid in the back seat on a long trip." Sam mentioned as he flew next to Jason.

"Al?" Jason made conversation as he held the wheel. "Yeah, Max gets funny too, but…he's still my best friend. He's saved my life a lot."

"Al has saved me a lot too." Sam liked this ability to connect with someone like him. "I don't know what I'd do without him."

"Hey, I'm the black Superman!!!" Linked with a holographic plane, Max was in a visual simulation of being high in the atmosphere and moving with the plane, flying on one leg with his arms out stretched. "Here I am to save the day!!!" He was grinning and laughing at himself over this holographic flight. Right next to him, Al couldn't see him. He was looking around and over and behind him for something that might bring down the Cessna.

"Sam, there is nothing out here…" Al looked around once and twice. Maybe he spoke too soon, as he looked round under the plane and around him, he saw something dash under him. He thought it was a bird, but it was too fast, and too… red.

"What the heck was that?" He mumbled under his breath. "Gooshie, what was that?"

"I haven't an idea…" Gooshie, the Quantum Leap project analyzer was trying to analyze the object. "Less that six feet in size, red, moving at 120 miles an hour…"

ALEX had detected it as well.

"120 miles an hour!" Max was screaming. "What moves that fast?"

"There is nothing in my databank to account for an object over Cape Cod at that speed." ALEX spoke in male voice to Zoe Bouchard, the project director monitoring Jason's leaps.

"Max," Zoe was running diagnostics. "Whatever it was created a sonic boom. That's what must have hit the plane!"

"Jason!!!" Max was losing it.

"Sam!!!" Al reappeared in the plane. "Ziggy is detecting a sonic boom! Rear up!!!"

"Jason! Watch that sonic boom!" Max was screaming, but it was too late. The plane was buffeted hard, rattling through the repercussion in the air. Jason tried to respond, but the concussive force knocked out the engines and shattered the cockpit windows. Sam grabbed his oxygen mask at the same time as Jason. As the experienced flier, Jason felt the plane still gliding on momentum then raced to do a mid-air restart.

"Start… come on, restart…"

"Control tower!" Sam was screaming on the radio. "We got hit by something up here…we're going down thirty miles north of Nantucket over Cape Cod Bay…"

"Really, Brian…" Tod Banning, the Boston radar guy, remained skeptical. "What was it this time? A fat bearded guy and eight tiny reindeer?"

"Listen…" Jason took the radio screaming since Joe Hackett was more reliable. "Something knocked my engines out! They are not restarting!" The plane had glided on inertia about so far, but without thrust to attain any lift, it was starting to descend and fall like a wounded bird. The engines were out, the nose was dipping…

"Dude, you gotta get off this death trap!" Max was screaming.

"Sam, Ziggy says you two have got to get out of here!!!" Al was screaming as the plane went down. "This plane is going to rip apart when it hits the open water! Without either of the brothers, Helen loses her career because of the lawsuits!!!"

"Jason!" Sam was trying to think. "You've got to get the plane restarted!"

"I'm trying! I'm trying!!!" Jason was panicking as the Cessna dived toward the ocean. "Whatever we hit knocked the fuel lines loose, I'm not getting the engines back!!" He felt the plane tilting toward the open bay. "Sam, save yourself!!"

"No!" Sam undid his seatbelts and Jason's. "Brian doesn't have any credibility! It's Joe that needs to survive!!"

"I'll be right behind you!!!" Jason screamed over the squealing wind pouring through the open cockpit. "Trust me!!!"

"Sam!!!" Al was screaming at his buddy, but Sam wasn't taking orders. He struck Jason across the face as the plane came down spiraling… Barely knocked out, Jason's mind went out as Sam grabbed him and started pulling him from the pilot's seat. The entire plane was leaning even more as he dragged Jason through the row of seats past Al watching in disbelief, but as the plane started rearing straight to open water, it suddenly leveled… the floor became flat again as Sam pulled Jason to the exit. Instead of water, the plane was aiming straight for land…

This was going to be an ugly landing. The falling plane screeched over the marina and docks in Plymouth Harbor as witnesses watched. It crashed through the rooftop crow's nest of the Captain D's Restaurant in it's path, it's wake raking up wind and gusts of air along main street as cars screeched to a stop. One wing took out several streetlights and traffic signals… Why wasn't it crashing? Something was keeping it aloft and doing a lot of damage as it took the plane down. The screaming torrents of air could be heard for miles. People were racing for cover. Photographer Dawson Leery from Capeside watched the plane crash through the fence of the schoolyard as it came down lower, but as he shot his picture, he noticed something else. What was that red flapping object clinging to the underside of the fuselage?

Inside the plane, Sam was struggling with the passenger door as he was thrown around on the floor. Too many things were racing by the windows… buildings, rooftops, a church steeple, a chain-link fence being ripped up and a sports car in the Cessna's path that flew up then landed on its tires again. The tail section was left in the schoolyard, but gradually the plane started slowing. Shopping cars were being thrown over the nose of the plane. Cashier Natalie Winston looked up as the plane came closer and closer toward the front of the local Kroger's Food Store then stopped altogether in the parking lot. Customers gasped as the stricken plane came to a rest after nearly a mile of devastation along the ground. The screams of winds were now replaced by the shrill cry of police and rescue vehicles. Lying prostrate on the floor of the small plane, Sam and Jason looked at each other in confusion. How did they survive this?

Amidst the witnesses and would-be rescuers swarming the plane, a few of them snapping photos of the plane, someone got the doorway open from outside. The police were rolling on the scene just as Sam was pulled out and helped to his feet. Jason looked around confused. Half of each wing was gone, the tail section was gone, the nose and cockpit was wrecked, damaged, dented and caved in from the restaurant roof and the entire underside was scarred, mangled and torn to shreds down to the internal fuselage. The plane was totaled, but… it had stayed in piece. Paramedics rushed to the two disoriented pilots.

"What the heck was that?" Jason was looking around. Sam was equally confused. Just how did they survive that?

"Dude," Max was looking over the wreckage and aftermath of the destruction. "I have no idea of what happened, but, hey, ALEX says you made it."

"Joe and Brian come out of it with a few scrapes and injuries…" Al was reading the same news from Ziggy.

"The brother's insurance company gets them a new much better rocking plane…" Max added.

"The FAA investigate, but they don't find the Hackett brothers responsible for the crash…" Al continued.

"Helen is so excited that Joe survives, the two of you have a baby girl in nine months…" Max continued reading the new history as Sam and Jason were placed on stretchers. The police were blocking off the area of the parking lot.

"Joe and Helen have a baby girl, and name her Crystal Veronica Hackett…" Al still had more news. "Brian shapes up too… One year from now, he marries and has two boys…" Al caught something else about these events. "This is weird. Some guy named Dawson Leery caught a photo of you two going down. Look at this!!!" He showed Sam the photo. It was the tail section of the plane breaking off as the plane coming down over Main Street. Trapped in the shot for prosperity, there was the image of someone clinging to the underside of the plane. Whoever it was had long blonde hair, a blue outfit and something that looked like a long red overcoat…

"Where the heck did she come from?" Jason looked to the EMTs as he was lifted to the ambulance. Standing beyond the crowd, Maddie Fitzpatrick, that Tipton Hotel candy counter girl from Boston, was watching from the edge of the crowd. She locked eyes on Jason then hurriedly darted behind the ambulance.

"Sam," Jason rolled to his side and reached over to his time-misplaced brother. "Did you see that? Maddie's here…"

"Maddie…" The two of them joined hands out of friendship. "How could she possibly be here?" Sparks flew around their fingers and quantum energies poked through the world as they leaped together as friends, leaving Joe and Brian Hackett being restored confused and in pain from an experience everyone told them they had. Everything was white with brighter sparkles of light, but when it finally dissolved, Sam found himself laying back on a park bench and looking up at stars. No, it wasn't a park bench; it was a bench on board a great luxury liner. It was night and the air was extremely cold. He shivered, pulled his coat a bit tighter and sat up as someone darted past him. She was exquisitely beautiful with perfect white alabaster skin, royal blue eyes and long curly red hair. She stepped on the railing at the bow of the ship and lifted herself up off the deck, swinging her other leg over and hanging off the back of the ship. She was going to be another soul lost at sea if he didn't stop her. Oh god, don't say what he thought she was doing….

"Look, look…" Sam carefully confronted her. "You don't want to do that."

"Why not?"

"Because…" Sam tried to think. "There is nothing so bad that can't be fixed by taking your life. There's always another solution."

"There's no solution to my problem!" The hysterical beauty looked at him. "I'm tired of living the same life… over and over… People telling me what to do, who to marry…"

"Then don't!" Sam implored her. "It's your life. No one has the right to tell you what to do…" Sam looked over the side of the boat. "If you want to live your own life, you must take charge of it. Don't let anyone else tell you what to do."

"It's rather impudent of you to order me about like this." The redhead seemed British by the tone and accent of her voice. Her demeanor was aristocratic. She was related to royalty or at least well off. What could make someone with so much want to take their life? "I mean, what sort of person has the right to order around another person?"

"No one has that right…" Sam came closer to her. "But when someone is so obviously screaming for help, I want to help." He reached out to her. "Let me help you."

The girl found herself trusting him for some reason. She thought about it, and lifted her leg to swing it back over, but her skirt was too taut, her period clothing to restrictive or something and she lost her footing. Sam just barely grabbed her as she screamed. Crewmen on the ship heard her and came running. All they saw was the woman being pulled down by the other passenger. They raced up as the woman regained her bearing and tried standing. They grabbed Sam and pulled him back unaware of what had occurred.

"You!" The Junior Petty Officer screamed at Sam. "Don't move a muscle!" He ordered the confused time traveler. Sam reacted misplaced once more. Where was he? When was he? The young lady seemed okay – embarrassed for him but okay. Trying to collect his bearings, the time-lost doctor took a closer look at those crew uniforms. They were black, but at the center of their badges, he could read the words "White Star Line." Where did he know that company? As he tried recalling, he noticed the lifesaver on the wall several feet away. It read, "S.S. Titanic."

"Titanic?" Sam slowly went into shock. "I'm on the Titanic?! Oh boy…."


	5. Chapter 5

5

He had leaped beyond his lifetime! He was not supposed to do that! Not only was this going to make it harder for Al to find him, but it also meant he was likely beyond Ziggy's capacity for detecting him. Without Al, Sam had to do his own detective work. Within moments of saving the young heiress, Sam realized she was Rose Dewitt-Bukater, an obscure American debutante who had been living in Paris and was now traveling back to the United States. He was now someone named Jack Dawson, something of an artist from the artwork he found in his possession. The most stunning part was that he was on the Titanic, the great luxury liner that sank several miles off the coast of Nova Scotia on April 14, 1912. It was one of the most notorious events in the history of the world. Over three quarters of the ship's passengers and crew froze to death in the North Atlantic when it grazed the side of an iceberg. Because of it, both maritime laws and regulations were affected to keep it from ever happening again. It was all going to happen again, and Sam couldn't stop it. Instead, he focused on Rose to try and get her to be more assertive and in control of her life, falling for her as a result. As Al and Project: Quantum Leap searched for him, they began extending their search perimeters backward into history and got a lock. Once they found him, a deeply grateful Al Calavicci went to rejoin his buddy in the past through modern holographic technology. He found himself in a restored stateroom of the lost ship. Sam was there as well wandering around before noticing him.

"Sam…" Al entered the imaging chamber where he connected with Sam in the past. "My god… We've going crazy trying to track you down. You actually jumped off our grid. Sam, you're on the Titanic!!!"

"I know that! I know that!!" Sam reacted, looked to see if Rose was back then looked back to Al. "How did you find me?"

"Sam, Ziggy lost our lock on you." Al waned his comlink. "The only way we found you was through ALEX at USI. Both Thomas Andrews and Jack Dawson, the guy you leaped into, are in their ready room in Baltimore."

"Thomas Andrews…" Sam started recalling his Titanic history. "He's the guy who built and designed the ship…"

"Yeah," Al confirmed it. "That's who Jason leaped into; he's going through trying to drop hints about what's going to happen about how the iceberg popped the rivets, the flooding of multiple compartments, how the ship can't corner worth a damn and how it would be to just ram the iceberg than trying to go around it, but it's not working. History still says the ship goes down tonight with Jack and Rose still on it."

"Al, he can't do that!!!" Sam responded with disbelief. "Changing people's lives for the better is one thing, but… the sinking of the Titanic was a major, major event in history. Changing it could cause population explosions, major census changes, alterations in maritime law and procedure…"

"I don't think it matters. The ship still sinks tonight." Al sighed and watched Sam pacing back and forth. He noticed the moved bench and the sketchbook open to a blank page. The top illustration was missing, but he could see the bottom indentation of the picture of a naked woman resembling Rose. "Sam, what has been going here?"

"What, oh…" Sam turned round trying to think. "Rose had me draw a picture of her topless on the sofa. I didn't think I could do it, but I think a bit of Jack stayed behind in me, and…" Al was pulling up the recovered image from a dive on the ship the Nineties.

"Wait a second…" Al looked at Ziggy's file on the recovered Jack Dawson artwork. "This was the night she posed for that, and I missed it? Rats!!! We should have locked on faster!"

"Al!!!" Sam scolded him. "You've got to lock on to Jason and guide me to him so we can talk." Sam had to get to Jason and straighten him out despite his good intentions. "Look, we can't stop the sinking, but can save a lot more people if we work together…."

"I can't lock on to anyone, Sam." Al shook his head. "You're in their system until we can get Ziggy and ALEX working together efficiently. Their technology is still too incompatible of ours. Did you know that Jason almost always leaps out of his lifetime? He sometimes leaps as far back as 1200 BC!"

"You're kidding me?!"

"Sam, there's something else." Al waved and gestured with his cigar. "Ziggy has been talking a lot to ALEX, the project control system at USI, and there's apparently something about the explosion that trapped Jason in the past that they never told him." He paused a bit and Sam turned to listen. "It was a bit more than a system failure that lost him. His ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend broke into the institute looking for him and somehow made it into the project control room. In the fracas, their directional system keeping a lock on him was knocked off telemetry and damaged. Apparently, ALEX is able to get him back… but they're having a hard time locking on him because of the way he keeps leaping."

"Why wouldn't they tell him?"

"Personally, I think they're stringing him along to keep his donation checks coming, but ALEX has the theory that unconsciously…" Al paused. "Jason doesn't want to come back. That… he actually likes moving through time meeting these historical figures and changing history for the better." Al looked around and Sam took a moment to absorb that info. "However, Gooshie is working with the USI techs to hopefully merge the systems, our telemetry system with their locking technology to get you both home."

"How close are they?"

"Ziggy says we could have working program in a few days unless…" He reacted a bit worried. "Jason leaps and they lose contact with him again. The systems… just aren't exactly compatible." He looked at Sam again. "Meanwhile, Sam, Ziggy agrees with you and that you have to get as many more people off the ship as you can. Forget about Jason, he can't stop the sinking. Just help as many people as you can."

"Al…" Sam looked for Rose to finish changing clothes. "What about Rose? She makes it right?"

"Rose?" Al puffed his stogie and checked his comlink. "No, Sam… she doesn't make it."


	6. Chapter 6

6

Things went bad in more ways than one after the ship hit the iceberg. Sam was framed for robbing from Cal Hockley, Rose's fiancé, trying to keep him from Rose. The pompous and jealous steel heir had very little conscience and even less morals. It was actually Rose that came to his rescue in the sinking ship as history unfolded. At first, most of the passengers were complacent to what was happening, but as it became more and more obvious that their lives were in danger, the worse aspects of humanity began to come out into the open. People panicked, others tried to force themselves into the limited lifeboats.

"Bogg!!!" Another time-traveler named Jeffrey Jones fought against being placed in a boat to be near his mentor in their invasions, but he failed. He was being forced off ship. More interested in saving the stolen Mona Lisa, Phineus Bogg pushed his way around Doug Phillips and Tony Newman, two more lost drifters from the future, but at a time a bit earlier than them both. It was their underground facility in the Sixties upon which Project Quantum Leap was created. In the fracas of madness, worry and selfishness, Angelique Bouchard was rushed to a boat by her protector. The ship was coming up higher and higher out of the water even as boats came off of it. As the panic grew higher, tensions started to mount. As Thomas Andrews, Jason had to order the crew to fill the boats to their fullest capacity. In the meantime, the first hold as he predicted had filled with water, pouring into the second, pouring over into the third… The bow of the great ship was descending into the water. According to ALEX, Sam and Rose were deep in the bowels of the ship. Wondering what they were doing there, he worried less about himself and raced to get as many people to the main deck and the boats.

Having fled Hockley rushing after them with a gun, Sam and Rose were rushing up through the first class dining area toward the stern above the water as Jason was lead by ALEX to find them. He raced past the chair and tables resisting any proclivity to slide and entered the next dining area. Looking up, Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt looked to see Thomas Andrews looking for each other, the two men once again reunited and took each other's hands to a burst of atomic particles and chronal energies revealing the true guises of the true men to each other but not to Rose. For all she knew, they were the men she thought they were. Sam welcomed Jason with a brotherly hug upon seeing him again.

"I notice Rose found you." Jason responded. It was him who repeated the path from ALEX to take Rose to rescue Sam as Jack. "What happened?"

"It's not important…" Sam looked to Rose and back to Jason. "How many more people did you save?"

"I don't know." Jason was upset. "I don't think I had any effect at all." He looked to Rose by his side. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you a safer boat."

"Come with us, Mr. Andrews…" Rose tugged at Jason.

"No, Rose," He daintily wiped the fear from her face. "Your future is on another path then mine." He took a deep breath. "Take care of her,… Jack."

"I will…." Sam hugged Jason again. He had found his brother. "I'll find you."

"I'll be looking for you." They whispered. Al took Rose by the hand and took her back up to the main deck. Standing in the dining hall, Jason checked the pocket watch in Thomas Andrews' pocket then noticed the Queen Anne clock on the mantle.

"Less than fifteen minutes left…"

"That clock is eight minutes off…" Max was there as well. Jason looked to his holographic buddy, opened the clock and adjusted the time to the how Robert Ballad would discover it in the future. When he did, electricity crackled through him and he began bursting with white energy. He was moving forward in time, and Max was suddenly in a blank imaging chamber in an underground lab under the physics wing at USI Baltimore. Out in New Mexico, a similar project was occurring off the White Sands Military Base…

"Admiral…" Gooshie looked worried. "I still can't get a lock on Dr. Beckett, however, ALEX says that Jason leaped."

"Jason…" Al became concerned. "What about Sam?"

"ALEX gave me the coordinates." Gooshie took the date and manually fed them into Ziggy. "He's still in 1914…"

"Did the Titanic sink with him?"

"I can't tell." Gooshie checked his readings. "But I got the imaging chamber up." The doors opened up and Al grabbed his reprogrammed comlink to go find Sam. The room was dark. There was nothing but eternal night and the image ocean around him under the floor. There was nothing but thrashing and screaming. Hundreds of bobbing people in White Star life jackets thrashing in the open sea, panicking captains-of-industry drowning next to floating bodies covered in ice, women clutching to husbands and freezing White Star crew members clutching to debris from the ship were all around as far as they eye could separate sea from the horizon. His mind struggled to see this literal sea of humanity. Al looked around in shock, his hand to his head in disbelief. Where was Sam in this horrific event? All these people screaming for help from the heavens and he couldn't reach out to any of them but one!

"Sam!!!" He screamed out. He walked in a circle through the imaging chamber. The searchlight from Ziggy allowed him to focus and light up parts of the hologram, giving him the faces of the tragic victims one by one, both dead and fighting to stay alive. A few feet to his right, Al saw Rose heaved up on to a floating headboard from a bed. She was staring up to the sea half alive. Sam was in the water… broken handcuffs on his wrist…

"Sam," Al hovered two feet above the sea as a hologram. "Thank God! Thank God!!! Can you hear me? Ziggy says you and Jason were only able to save fifty-five more people than the first time the ship sank. That's only 705! It's still being considered one of the worst disasters in maritime history."

"Al…" Sam floated on the headboard with Rose. "What about Rose? Does she survive?"

"Sam, there's no listing for a Rose Bukater in the survivors!" Al was becoming hysterical. "Sam, Jason leaped! He's now some little fat kid named Spanky in Greenpoint, California in the early Thirties, but you're still stuck in their system. However, Ziggy can get a lock on you again once you leap! You got to leap or you're going to freeze to death!!"

"No!!!" Sam refused as the cold ripped through him. "Not until I save Rose and Jack! How far away are the life boats?"

"Sam, the closest one is five hundred yards in that direction and getting ready to come look for survivors, but you're not going to make it!!!" Al was screaming at him scared to death he was going to die. "Sam, you have to leap now!!!"

"Not till I save Rose…" Sam insisted. He tried rousing her awake. "Al, you've got to help me!!!"

"What can I do?!" Al screamed. "I'm a hologram!!! Sam, you've got to leap or you're going to die!"

"I'm not leaping until I save Rose!!!" Sam tried waking her. He checked her pulse and found it very slow. She was still alive but barely. "How far away are the boats?"

"The closest one won't be here for twenty minutes, but you're not going to make it." Al was getting even more frenzied and frantic as his buddy stayed in these frozen North Atlantic waters. "Sam, ALEX says you're suffering from hypothermia. He's predicting you'll be dead in five minutes!!! Sam, please for the love of God! You've got to leap out of Dawson!!!"

"Al, please…" Sam was trying to warm up Rose by rubbing her arms. "Run another search for her… does she survive?!!"

"ALEX can't find no trace of her…There's no…" Al suddenly did a double take and looked again. "Wait, Sam, Ziggy found her!! She changes her name to Rose Dawson. That's why we couldn't find her! She does live! Sam, she survives, you hear me??? Sam, you've got to leap!!!"

"What about Jack?"

"Jack?" Al was punching up more facts. "Jack… he doesn't make it, Sam…"

"No…" Sam exploded with emotion as his chest pumped from the sorrow. "Rose…" Shivering, fighting to stay awake, Sam tried to grin happily for her; his face leaned in and whispered in her ear. "You have a good life!" He beamed happily for her and cried for joy. He dropped his head next to her and relaxed as everything erupted for him in lights and floating particles. The world vanished for him and he shot forward back to his lifetime past the Depression, two world wars, the Cold War of the Fifties, the hippie movement of the Sixties, the crazy fads of the seventies and the money-obsessed Eighties. Beyond the Nineties, he re-entered the time stream at a point just after the events of Nine-Eleven when he was one of the rescue workers in that disaster, past the time he shared the life of Hannah Montana and very close to the moment in the lifetime of Detective Don Flack he once had. As Sam could see again, he found himself sitting at the end of a sofa next to a lovely young lady and across from their eighteen-year-old brother in a room decorated with the ornaments of a Dungeons and Dragons game. There were large leather bound books, rolled up scrolls, statues of dragons and wizards, a suit of armor and an Egyptian sarcophagus next to the entryway. It could have been some sort of parlor, but it just didn't feel right. Amidst it all, their father moved about them.

"Max," Jerry Russo turned to his youngest son. "I want you to demonstrate that spell we were practicing yesterday."

"What?" Sam looked at him and his two siblings. He was supposed to demonstrate something? "Oh boy…."

END


End file.
